J 859.] on Modern Gothic Architecture, 43 



Mr. Ruskin is manifestly right in describing Redundance, or 

 visible superfluity of materials or dimensions, as an essential element 

 of Gothic effect, and probably of all effect in architecture. Redund- 

 ance in ornamentation we are only too capable of appreciating, as I have 

 said already ; and on redundance in height the architects seem disposed 

 to run equally wild ; but redundance in mass, and in length, and in 

 depth of external shadows, all of them eminently characteristic of 

 the best English Gothic, they choose steadily to ignore. And as long 

 as tiiey do, and as long also as people will require architects to erect 

 public buildings, ecclesiastical or civil, of such capacity and for such a 

 j)rice that they cannot afford to put in materials enough for architectural 

 effect, even if they wished, so long is there no hope for any real revival 

 of architecture in any style whatever ; unless indeed the iron and glass 

 style is to be dignified with the name of architecture ; as I should 

 think it would be by the gentlemen in the House of Commons who 

 keep crying out for more light, when they have learnt, as they perhaps 

 may some day, that the style which they are advocating now is one of 

 the darkest in the world, and was intentionally made so for good 

 reasons in its own country, while the people of the south wondered at 

 the largeness of our Gothic windows here. 



The professional architects are naturally very angry at the severe 

 things which are sometimes written of them by the amateurs (on 

 whose behalf I shall have something more to say before I have done) ; 

 but none of us have said anything so severe as what I am now going 

 to quote from a recent book written by one of themselves. Speaking 

 of these two cognate faults of modern architecture, thinness and want 

 of shadow, Mr. Garbett says : — 



" The want of thickness in the walls, and recess in the openings, renders the 

 whole of the architectural ornament applied to many of our public buildings worse 

 than thrown away, since it makes them more ridiculous as architectural fa9ades 

 than they would otherwise have been as brick walls. The draughtsmen of com- 

 petition drawings are well aware of this source of effect [depth of windows], and 

 committees should be on their guard against it ; for many of the disappointpients 

 experienced when these pretty designs have been executed may be traced back to 

 the direct falsehood of representing their walls twice or thrice as thick as they were 

 intended to be. By a most unfortunate seeming fatality, the great national work 

 of the age, which must have such a powerful influence on its taste, has been 

 doomed to afford an instance of this disappointment. In the original prspective views 

 of its famous river front, the windows were recessed at least three feet from the plane 

 of the wall ; but as executed they do not seem to be one foot therefrom : that is to 

 say (taking the front as 800 ft. by 70 in round numbei's) the glass has been so 

 advanced as to rob the exterior of 112,000 cubic feet of apparent solidity. This 

 single circumstance would be sufficient by itself, if not counteracted [which it is not], 

 to make all the difference between a sublime building and a mean one ; but among 

 many complaints at imaginary grievances, no critic raises the cry of ' Give us back 

 our 112,000 cubic feet.' " — Rudimentary Treatise on Design, p. 103. 



striking. I have no doubt that something truly grand, Gothic, and yet novel, might 

 be done in that line by an architect of genius. But the domes must be large: I 

 believe a small dome, standing by itself at least, is an inevitably poor thing. 



